Women with horse heads, toads with breasts, coyotes in the lotus position, conjoined giraffes: where do these extraordinary forms come from? From my hands, intellect, imagination, and heart. From Virginia, from Boston, from Johannesburg, Harare and Windhoek, from meditation seat and memory, swelling, bursting out, in Corvallis, Oregon.

I remember tossing my mane, and galloping across the playground (6), and the smell of horse sweat in piney woods (10). I remember all the toads wetting my little hands, or fed to snakes, and the ceramic frog my father gave me “To my little ex-tadpole” (21). There are nightmares of children dying, of teargas against justice; there are dreams of flying and of understanding the voices of dogs (60).